Well,
as far as we're concerned, this summer was just too damn short.
Too much work and mediocre weather (thank you, El Niņo!) cut into
our pleasure. To compensate, we've found ourselves renting videos
like Gidget and the various Beach Blanket movies.
We've been fantasizing about weenie roasts with the gang on a really
happening beach. And we've been listening to a lot of really horridly
wonderful Beach music from the early 1960s.

It's
hard to describe exactly the kind of music we're after. It's not
just surf music and it's not just pre-Beatles American pop. The
music needs to work for spontaneous dancing on Muscle Beach or a
pajama-clad line dance around the pool. It needs to be over the
top, slightly stupid and celebrate the joys of being an American
teen. The other dancers should have names like Dee Dee, Moondoggie,
Go Go, Connie, Potato Bug, Boom Boom, Bunny, Animal and Candy. Clothes
are of course bikinis, swim trunks or terry cloth playsuits, except
in the evenings when we go to Bunny's parentīs house for a big party
and we fellows twist away in tight suits
and skinny ties while the gals don stunning off-the-rack Givenchy
knock-offs.

The
perfect CD compilation of our fantasy has yet to be made but there
are some good places to start. Maverick rock and roll label Del-Fi
has two great compilations out, Del-Fi Beach Party and Del-Fi
Pool Party that are almost perfect. Pool Party has lots
of songs perfect for diving board go-go dancing, like Watusi
Bongos, Swim Beat and a surprisingly good cover of Mack the
Knife. There are a few less than bikini-worthy tracks but on
the whole, you could play the CD all the way through at your next
shindig. Beach Party has a slightly more surf attitude. A
few surf-story tracks bog down the dancing action, but there's
more than enough great material to justify the purchase. What's
really great about both discs is that the material is going to be
unknown except to fanatics.

Rhino's
Hard Rock Café Surf is solid as an introduction to the Surf
scene but too many of the songs are available elsewhere, like Miserlou,
Surfin' Safari, the theme from Hawaii Five-O, Endless Summer
and Wipe Out. It's fine but it's almost too good. We're after
Beach music rather than just Surf.

No
one better represented the Beach movement than lovely Annette Funicello.
A good place to start (and finish) is her Beach Party CD.
There are lots of novelty numbers like Luau Cha Cha Cha, Jamaica
Ska (with an actual ska beat!), Wah-Watusi and Bikini
Beach Party, all perfect for our needs but there are quite a
few love songs, making this one a good source for your own mixed
tape. It must be said that Annette is really a horrible singer with
no depth and that's part of the reason why we love her so.

A
lot of the great Beach movies featured specialty numbers by the
very pretty Donna Loren. Compared to Annette Funicello, Loren was
Ella Fitzgerald. In a lot of the movies, she sounded almost like
a folk singer trying to belt. On her CD compilation, Beach Blanket
Bingo: The Best of Donna Loren, we hear that she was a very
young woman trying to find her voice and she sings in an almost
neurotic variety of styles, only occasionally capturing the magic
on the screen. There are some great tracks (It Only Hurts When
I Cry, Muscle Bustle, Smokey Joe's), but on the whole, this
CD should be purchased when your collection is more complete.

More
Beach Online:

Bright Lights Film Journal has a serious in-depth
article
on the whole Beach Movement in film. Itīs pretty interesting but
for us the bottom line is we just like to see the singing and
dancing.